Git Ignore folders in specific paths

Question

I have a rule on gitignore file to exclude folders with name "bar" but I want to "un-ignore" if the "bar" folder is below "foo"

• ignore: bar/

• but allow: foo/bar

Is it possible? How can I do it?

I tryed:

bar/
!foo/bar/

and

bar/
foo/*
!foo/bar/

and many other options but no luck.

what happens is that it ignores (prevent commit) both "bar" folders or none, I can't make it ignore only the one that is outside "foo"

Answer 1

Is it possible? How can I do it?

The first solution you mentioned works.

Output of git status --untracked-files=all . without the .gitignore file:

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
        bar/something.txt
        foo/bar/something.txt

So we see two files are new and reported as "untracked".

If we now create a .gitignore file with the following content

bar/
!foo/bar/

the output changes to

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
        .gitignore
        foo/bar/something.txt

so git

• picks up our newly created .gitignore file
• ignores the bar/something.txt which is still present on the filesystem
• but does not ignore the foo/bar/something.txt